Guernsey prison's early adoption of SkyFence could be copied by UK institutions as drops of contraband by drones increase.
SkyFence was invented by the CEO of Drone Defence Services Ltd, Richard Gill.
He told Island FM it works by sensing a drone is flying into prison airspace, and then it jams the signal from the operator to that drone:
"It interrupts that connection between the controller and the drone, which makes it impossible for the controller to fly the drone in the space where SkyFence is operating."
He says a benefit is that modern drones, when jammed like this, will return to the place where they took off from:
"[The drone's response is,] I'm not hearing anything from the controller any more so I'll turn around and fly back out to the place where I last got a message from my operator."
This then leads law enforcement to the person trying to drop drugs, drones or even weapons into prison.
Guernsey's Les Nicolles prison featured briefly in a Channel News special last night (8 October) on the drone problem in UK prisons.
The broadcaster revealed reported incidents of drone use for flying in contraband have increased by 1000% over the past five years.
Richard says the former governor at Guernsey Prison wanted to adopt the technology early:
"He had fantastic foresight to look over the horizon at potential threats to the prison estate and drones were an emerging threat back in 2017."
At that time, security was being reviewed at Les Nicolles, and the decision was taken to use SkyFence, but a Guernsey law had to be amended as a result:
"It took some time for us to change the legislation to allow the system to be deployed in Guernsey because, typically disrupting signals is not permitted."
Richard Gill says there is now a lot of interest in SkyFence:
"We get an enquiry every week from a prison in the UK, and around the world as well, so there is a massive demand for this, from people who are having to deal with the problem on the front line."
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